Speaker:

In April 2012, the National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States of America released its Second Nutrition Report using National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data from 2003–2006 for 58 indicators of diet and nutrition like vitamin D, iodine, and folate.

The Second Nutrition Report found that less than 10% of the USA population was at risk for selected nutritional deficiencies. However, for most of the nutritional indicators, deficiencies varied by age, sex, or race-ethnicity. As an extension of the Second Nutrition Report, NCEH researchers evaluated sociodemographic, lifestyle and physiologic variables like education, smoking, and pregnancy to understand whether these variables play a role in explaining the demographic differences found in the Second Nutrition Report.

This presentation will provide an overview of selected findings from this work. One important and overarching finding was that while sociodemographic and lifestyle variables provided some insight into the demographic differences found in the Second Nutrition Report, overall differences in nutrition biomarker levels still depended on age, sex, or race-ethnicity. The collective information from these analyses will not only help investigators and policy-makers better interpret currently available data on biomarker levels, but will also provide a foundation to investigators planning future nutrition studies or developing predictive models to study the association of nutritional status with health outcomes.

Hosted by:

Evidence and Programme Guidance Unit, Department of Nutrition for Health and Development (NHD)